Roman

The Curse of Crestwood Hollow - A Hyperhuman Story [CLOSED]

J E N N Y V E N O M

_______________________________________________ Jennifer Amber Vandermeyer _______________________________________________ 31-10-71 | | Caucasian _______________________________________________ Single | ‍♀️ | Heterosexual _______________________________________________ Mather's Memorial Student | Defiant to the end _______________________________________________ Physical Profile ___________________________________ • Height | 5'3" • Weight | 111lbs • Build | Lean • Hair Colour | Jet black • Eye Colour | Deep brown

Appearance Details ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ Jennifer expresses rebellion in every way she can sink her claws into; her stubborn and bullheaded nature bleeds into her demeanor, walking around with a puffed chest and locked shoulders, a defiant frown plastered permanently across her face. Her long black hair, wild and unkempt, flows back and down her back, the most thought given to it a rough brushing every other day; it breaks a stark contrasting line across her ghost-pale skin. Her fashion sense further cements the image she seeks to cultivate: embedded in punk culture, she wears blacks with provocative slogans and imagery, chained jeans cuffed above heavy boots and always, always, a ragged leather jacket that is a wearable example of the Ship of Theseus, at this point more hap-hazard threading and safety pins than the original garment. Character Synopsis ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ Jennifer was born Halloween '71 to Micheal and Barbara Vandermeyer. Micheal, her father, worked in a bank, and her mother made a good home for her husband and new daughter. The family diligently attended church every Sunday, and many other days besides, and had a simple, satisfactory life, if somewhat humdrum. Micheal was able to adequately provide any material needs, and Barbara wanted little besides; they were a simple couple, devout in their beliefs. Jennifer first met Vanessa at 3 years old after the Vandermeyers moved to Crestwood following her father receiving a promotion, sent to the city to run the new branch the bank had just opened there. The Bordeaux's were their new neighbours, and little Jennifer was delighted to have a new friend so quickly after what little life she'd gotten a grip on had been so rapidly uprooted. Vanessa and Jennifer quickly became the firmest of friends in the way only growing little girls can manage, and their bond blossomed further as they entered education, being the two best friends either girl had had in their short lives thusfar. As they grew, so did their parents; while the Bordeaux's were a well-respected family in Crestwood, Jennifer's parents picked up a reputation for being overly preachy and judgmental; while Jennifer herself had stopped attending church since she turned 10, her parents were still devout, perhaps even zealous believers at times, and in their deepening age relied more and more on their faith as a cornerstone of their values, and their daughter as the cornerstone of their future. Jennifer began to slowly realize her life was being planned and curated for her, and the seed of resentment found root in her core. Jennifer turned to music, as did so many young girls and boys; the world around her was alive with all kinds of new sounds, but where Vanessa, her best friend, fell in love with Disco and the elating, motivating sounds found therein, Jennifer was drawn to the messy, defiant catharsis of the still-young Punk Rock movement. Punk reveled in sticking two fingers up and damn the consequences, a philosophy Jennifer adopted with frightening speed and ease; everything became about rebellion. Jennifer forged a new identity in punk: Vandermeyer no longer, she was Jenny Venom, and she used this persona to divorce herself from her family's reputation, and her parent's plans for her. As Jennifer and Vanessa approached high school, they had drifted apart significantly; Jennifer had fallen in with her new spiky-haired, leather-wearing clique, and had derided Vanessa's love of Disco, spurning Vanessa's attempts to reconnect and rekindle the friendship. Vanessa kept herself graceful enough to never retaliate, allowing Jennifer the space to explore this new self she had constructed. Vanessa's death shattered Jenny's world, despite the distance she had deliberately made between her and her once-closest friend. The tragedy cast into harsh light exactly what life is and can be, and what it means when it is taken away; but these revelations have only triggered a further retreat into the persona. Jennifer was a little girl, her life being lived for her, path forcibly laid out ahead of her, naive and foolish. Jenny Venom is fearless, and tough, and survives everything. Hyper-Human Abilities ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ Jennifer's hype-gene has mutated specifically alongside her immune system and fight-or-flight response. When presented with physical trauma or sudden terror, before adrenaline floods her blood supply, a unique secondary 'hype-hormone' is secreted from her adrenal glands that blocks the receptors at her nerve endings, completely shutting down the nervous system pain response and instead replacing any incoming trauma signals with a direct signal to the endocrine system to produce further and further adrenaline. The mutated hype-adrenaline then bonds with her muscles and completely replaces the aerobic/anaerobic respiration function, eliminating lactic acid buildup and allowing indefinite function without exhaustion. Finally, the bonded 'hype-hormone' and adrenaline floods her skull cavity and passes through the pia mater into the blood vessels of the brain, and signals the activation of an extremely intense, subconscious form of auto-biokinesis, allowing her low-level brain functions to take over the immune system response and rewire muscles, organs, blood supply systems and bones on-the-fly to adapt to endure any and all incoming trauma without ceasing function. Once trauma has ceased or has been escaped, the 'hype-hormone' stops signalling, and the mutated adrenaline floods the immune system entirely, expediting recovery of injury, the body drawing adrenaline from its various appendages and organs working from the bodily extremes inward in order to necessitate quickened recovery while allowing maximum up-time of the unconscious biokinesis to aid natural physical recovery, before the adrenaline is drawn from the meninges entirely and disseminated as the final healing 'booster'. All these processes combined result in Jennifer being able to sustain intense physical trauma well above and beyond what would be typically fatal for a human, without feeling pain, losing motor or organ function, or slowing or shutting down - and then being able to recover from the trauma to full-functioning capacity at an increased rate after-the-fact.

Roman's Scrapbin

J E N N Y V E N O M

_______________________________________________ Jennifer Amber Vandermeyer _______________________________________________ 31-10-71 | | Caucasian _______________________________________________ Single | ‍♀️ | Heterosexual _______________________________________________ Mather's Memorial Student | Defiant to the end _______________________________________________ Physical Profile ___________________________________ • Height | 5'3" • Weight | 111lbs • Build | Lean • Hair Colour | Jet black • Eye Colour | Deep brown

Appearance Details ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ Jennifer expresses rebellion in every way she can sink her claws into; her stubborn and bullheaded nature bleeds into her demeanor, walking around with a puffed chest and locked shoulders, a defiant frown plastered permanently across her face. Her long black hair, wild and unkempt, flows back and down her back, the most thought given to it a rough brushing every other day; it breaks a stark contrasting line across her ghost-pale skin. Her fashion sense further cements the image she seeks to cultivate: embedded in punk culture, she wears blacks with provocative slogans and imagery, chained jeans cuffed above heavy boots and always, always, a ragged leather jacket that is a wearable example of the Ship of Theseus, at this point more hap-hazard threading and safety pins than the original garment. Character Synopsis ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ Jennifer was born Halloween '71 to Micheal and Barbara Vandermeyer. Micheal, her father, worked in a bank, and her mother made a good home for her husband and new daughter. The family diligently attended church every Sunday, and many other days besides, and had a simple, satisfactory life, if somewhat humdrum. Micheal was able to adequately provide any material needs, and Barbara wanted little besides; they were a simple couple, devout in their beliefs. Jennifer first met Vanessa at 3 years old after the Vandermeyers moved to Crestwood following her father receiving a promotion, sent to the city to run the new branch the bank had just opened there. The Bordeaux's were their new neighbours, and little Jennifer was delighted to have a new friend so quickly after what little life she'd gotten a grip on had been so rapidly uprooted. Vanessa and Jennifer quickly became the firmest of friends in the way only growing little girls can manage, and their bond blossomed further as they entered education, being the two best friends either girl had had in their short lives thusfar. As they grew, so did their parents; while the Bordeaux's were a well-respected family in Crestwood, Jennifer's parents picked up a reputation for being overly preachy and judgmental; while Jennifer herself had stopped attending church since she turned 10, her parents were still devout, perhaps even zealous believers at times, and in their deepening age relied more and more on their faith as a cornerstone of their values, and their daughter as the cornerstone of their future. Jennifer began to slowly realize her life was being planned and curated for her, and the seed of resentment found root in her core. Jennifer turned to music, as did so many young girls and boys; the world around her was alive with all kinds of new sounds, but where Vanessa, her best friend, fell in love with Disco and the elating, motivating sounds found therein, Jennifer was drawn to the messy, defiant catharsis of the still-young Punk Rock movement. Punk reveled in sticking two fingers up and damn the consequences, a philosophy Jennifer adopted with frightening speed and ease; everything became about rebellion. Jennifer forged a new identity in punk: Vandermeyer no longer, she was Jenny Venom, and she used this persona to divorce herself from her family's reputation, and her parent's plans for her. As Jennifer and Vanessa approached high school, they had drifted apart significantly; Jennifer had fallen in with her new spiky-haired, leather-wearing clique, and had derided Vanessa's love of Disco, spurning Vanessa's attempts to reconnect and rekindle the friendship. Vanessa kept herself graceful enough to never retaliate, allowing Jennifer the space to explore this new self she had constructed. Vanessa's death shattered Jenny's world, despite the distance she had deliberately made between her and her once-closest friend. The tragedy cast into harsh light exactly what life is and can be, and what it means when it is taken away; but these revelations have only triggered a further retreat into the persona. Jennifer was a little girl, her life being lived for her, path forcibly laid out ahead of her, naive and foolish. Jenny Venom is fearless, and tough, and survives everything. Hyper-Human Abilities ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ Jennifer's hype-gene has mutated specifically alongside her immune system and fight-or-flight response. When presented with physical trauma or sudden terror, before adrenaline floods her blood supply, a unique secondary 'hype-hormone' is secreted from her adrenal glands that blocks the receptors at her nerve endings, completely shutting down the nervous system pain response and instead replacing any incoming trauma signals with a direct signal to the endocrine system to produce further and further adrenaline. The mutated hype-adrenaline then bonds with her muscles and completely replaces the aerobic/anaerobic respiration function, eliminating lactic acid buildup and allowing indefinite function without exhaustion. Finally, the bonded 'hype-hormone' and adrenaline floods her skull cavity and passes through the pia mater into the blood vessels of the brain, and signals the activation of an extremely intense, subconscious form of auto-biokinesis, allowing her low-level brain functions to take over the immune system response and rewire muscles, organs, blood supply systems and bones on-the-fly to adapt to endure any and all incoming trauma without ceasing function. Once trauma has ceased or has been escaped, the 'hype-hormone' stops signalling, and the mutated adrenaline floods the immune system entirely, expediting recovery of injury, the body drawing adrenaline from its various appendages and organs working from the bodily extremes inward in order to necessitate quickened recovery while allowing maximum up-time of the unconscious biokinesis to aid natural physical recovery, before the adrenaline is drawn from the meninges entirely and disseminated as the final healing 'booster'. All these processes combined result in Jennifer being able to sustain intense physical trauma well above and beyond what would be typically fatal for a human, without feeling pain, losing motor or organ function, or slowing or shutting down - and then being able to recover from the trauma to full-functioning capacity at an increased rate after-the-fact.

Roman's Scrapbin

Powers
-Materialise any known weapon
-Survive extreme damage
-Self-Duplication
-Smoke Generation & Manipulation
-‘Bogeyman’ Form
-Salvage tech creation
-Passive tool upgrading
-Auto-biokinesis
-Insect communication & control
-Ferrokinesis
-Thermokinesis/Sun Generation
-Psionic Oppression
-Localised time reversal

The Blighted Kingdom

I've gone ahead and set up a few Blighted Kingdom channels in an existing server that myself, Wraith, and Hillan are all involved in already. Feel free to hit this link and join for TBK discussion at a faster pace! discord.com/invite/N3bwCfH

I don't want to nag but I am hoping for a few more posts before I start interfering and guiding the narrative as GM, and there are a few of you that are yet to post introducing your characters. Looking forwards to seeing your stuff!

I will say however that I'm quite happy for this game to be long-term and low-energy with minimal nagging as long as we're all keeping it going steadily. Times are exceptionally weird and I don't want what should be a leisure activity and hobby to be another source of obligation and undue anxiety.

The Blighted Kingdom

Are we going to be setting up a discord for this? It's more accessible OOC wise and stops it looking too noisy.

@BlackBlood

While I’m not actively opposed to a discord I do find it promotes a slower OOC thread and many questions end up being missed or DM’d directly to me, where I prefer an open discussion to foster engagement. The OOC here hasn’t been overly rowdy yet either.

Can I take a poll from everyone perhaps? Discord Y/N, pros and cons?

The Blighted Kingdom

I left the IC opening where it was to give the opportunity to you guys to do some back-dating, detailing how your characters came to the city, any pre-campaign life you'd like to detail, and then a chance to introduce yourselves to each other and decide how to tackle the task before you. There was a pretty even split between the players travelling as one large group and players splitting up and tackling cities separately, so I didn't want to force anyone together who may have preferred to strike out on their own.

The Blighted Kingdom

Sorry for the brevity, there's never usually much to work with in the intro post!

@Roman, since Roderick's such a stoic character and me and Dino are real fast at collabs, I wanted to make a pseudo-epistolary form where the introduction to our collab is laid out like a bunch of archived letters. For that, I was hoping to have the precise location and the date/time of day - would you be willing to provide that in your IC posts?

@Stitches

Yeah, sounds great. The opening IC post ends with the player characters outside Vasilius' city walls very late at night, 2 months after the departure of the Official Party (I will come up with a better name to refer to them with I promise), on the night on the player party's gathering and debrief. There isn't an official date so to speak, but we will say that the season is just turning to autumn - so mid-to-late August. Feel free to specify as you wish.

The Blighted Kingdom

So we start outside the palace gates right?

@BlackBlood

At the edge of Vasilius’ city gates, outside the city walls proper.

The Blighted Kingdom

@zyshi // @Lord Wraith // @BlackBlood // @Nib // @Stitches // @Hillan // @Tackytaff // @Mao Mao // @DinoNuts // @Thrash Panda

IC has launched and is open. Thank you all for your patience, and I look forward to reading your stories.

The Blighted Kingdom

As eras passed, rulers came and went, lineages rose up and fell to give way to new lineage, it became clear to historians, scholars, archivists across the land that Jocun Garland had faced perhaps the single most adverse, and arguably tragic, crisis of his family’s time in the palace, and perhaps of any High Lord that had come before him; certainly, far more wretched an age than any High Lord has presided over since. His fall, shared by the kingdom his bloodline had built, has left a ragged and untended scar upon the history of the realm and the memories of the people, and to this day stands as a brutal reminder of the fickle nature of everything we have, hold, or create, hoping to carve a tiny piece of our identity into the record books and hold on to a fleeting form of immortality. Many of our attempts are not as disastrous as the crisis of the Stone Blight, but an unlucky few can find their legacy becomes imprinted upon the world in despicable ways.

Broadly speaking, Jocun Garland made an acceptable attempt at High Lord. Lacking the fiery bravado of his father, he accepted the crown with some not-unnoticed reluctance, and made his best attempt at a responsibility he never desired to shoulder. His lack of passion for his heritage was reflected in his behavior in office; a little blase, a little lackadaisical, a little prone to allowing his Warlock and his Queen sway his decisions, or make them for him. No bother; they were both far sharper minds than his, his Queen a keen politician and his Warlock a great scholarly presence. In any case, Jocun turned out to be far too lazy to be malevolent. There of course remains much discourse about how his palatial arrangements forged the disasters to come, and how perhaps a steadier hand may have eased the descent, but that story has been discussed time and time again in multiple texts, and is not one that concerns this record, at least for the time being. No, this record, and the grand tale that it will tell, pertains to the unlikely band of heroes - heroes here a subjective term, applied a few years after the rubble cleared and true events became known - that came together in aid of Vassidia, seeking revolution, retribution, and restoration, not only for the kingdom but for their own personal demons.

Of course, the protagonists that our grand epic weaves around were not the first party of adventurers willing to risk everything they had for the good of the kingdom. In fact, at the time of embarking upon their odyssey, the palace had no intentions of publicly acknowledging their quest whatsoever. But first: context.

The Stone Blight had been ravaging the kingdom of Vassidia for over a year before the gathering of the first chosen saviors. It had crept up slowly at first, and many people had mistaken the first victims for mysterious wonders, strange humanoid rock formations, fat and dewy rubies sprouting from the surface, ripe for chipping off to be smuggled away as treasure, or for private sale for a quick fortune. But in the few months following, as rumors swept around and communities heard of similar statues across the realm, people began studying the rock, and what they found traumatized the nation. Peering past the rough, cracked surfaces, those who once picked away at the gems began to see the faces hidden beneath the rubies, and as more time passed, fear and panic and dread set in as more and more statues appeared, and the truth behind these terrible monuments became apparent. 6 months after the initial wave, the palace officially acknowledged it and made quarantine orders; by then, the plague already had its name. By the end of the first year, there was no corner of Vassidia left unscarred by this new horror, and all research, treatment, and experimentation had done nothing to slow or contain the spread. There was no known vector or method of transmission; symptoms were identical, but chose victims randomly. You’d get a rash. You’d get blisters. You’d turn to stone. The palace closed its gates, and desperation set in.

The palace’s silence lasted three months before the rising unrest in Vasilius’ citizenship could be ignored no longer; the people’s dissatisfaction was answered in the form of a task-force of sorts: a hand-picked cabal, composed of the best scholars and knights and nobles that the throne could assemble. Together, they would act as a dedicated group of heroes, who would be well-equipped to scour the kingdom, bring some respite to the public’s unquiet minds, and search every corner of the land for a cure or treatment. Their number totaled seven: and for posterity, we will list them here:

Malcom Blythe, a formidable and well-respected soldier, whose military prowess had elevated him to Captain in the palace’s Crownguard; Cara Brume, Aborran’s own apprentice, and a respected scholar in her own right within the palace; Logan Stone-Shatter, the eldest Mountain-Brave of Mornfell, a powerful and battle-wise warrior who had left his beloved city behind in hopes of saving it; Rufus Daurian, a Commander of the Wardens, the impartial peace-keeping force that patrolled the Sychan Desert and the Eastern Tundra, a patient, level-headed man with years of experience surviving, fighting, and leading his men in extreme conditions; Count Sylquen and his Housecarl, Oramir, of the Karnels, a revered family of aristocratic merchants and artists, well-known in Vasilius for their philanthropic efforts; and Gideon Bhurke, an extremely wealthy arms merchant, who was much-talked-about in Ferros and had been poised to join the Iron Council as a chancellor.

These seven forsook their individual riches and endeavors - instead, they banded together, graciously accepting their place beside each other as Vassidia’s best hope. They were lauded as heroes, and heroes they would be, for they equipped themselves with the greatest arms and armour the kingdom could offer, and set out on a perilous journey across a crumbling and diseased kingdom in search of salvation. On the shining day of their departure from the capital, it had been sixteen long months since the first victim of the plague, and the sickness showed no signs of stopping. The noble seven were paraded from the palace through the heart of Vasilius, the people celebrating their departure with heartfelt sincerity; this group of stalwart adventurers held the first spark of hope that any citizen had felt in the better part of a year.

Two months passed from the day of the group’s first steps upon their odyssey, and there had been no word, no grand return, no hailed coming-home of saviors with cures in their arms and epic tales in their hearts. It was just more deafening silence, a world’s hope pinned on seven men and women who had yet to deliver. In secret, the palace devised another group of agents; rumors and spy-craft used artfully to spread word, while the official stance stood steadfast behind the continued efforts of the chosen heroes. They were gathered in secret under cover of darkness, huddled together in a hidden courtyard on the outskirts of the palace grounds, debriefed by agents of the royal family without being granted the audience of their predecessors.

The original seven had dropped contact a few weeks previous, having otherwise been sending couriers and birds every few days following the start of their quest. The information held by the palace as to their whereabouts was limited, and at least a month out of date; the last definitive location of the party had been a missive from Ferros, and they had indicated they were due to leave the following morning to follow a lead they had uncovered regarding the old druids of Marisma - but since that last letter they had sent no more, and the Iron Council had since locked Ferros down in complete quarantine, closing their gates to trade, and, more worryingly, ceasing all work in the mines that were so vital to their economy and the kingdom’s supply of iron and steel. This new party, made of those who had responded to rumors and word-of-mouth, making their journeys to Vasilius to seek a new mission, find a new fortune, carve their names in new glory, were simply told to find the first party and whatever they had discovered, and report back; they were given all the information the palace had, and then quietly escorted from the city the same night, their mission never acknowledged publicly, and any prying citizens silenced covertly.

Pieced together from word-of-mouth, letters and communicado, and even scraps of the personal journals of those involved, what follows now is the tale of that second party: an unlikely group of mercenaries and exiles and rejects, survivors from all levels and fringes of society from all the kingdom over, their true story detailed as accurately as possible, in hopes of creating a true record of the events of the fall of the Garland lineage from where it began: at the doorstep of the palace.